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Saturday, February 28, 2004

Show 17

Last weekend in February and it looks like it’s going to be beautiful outside. Bring your radio with you as we talk tech from noon to 3p today on KFI AM 640 Los Angeles.

Today’s poll question: After Bill Gates spoke at the RSA Security convention this week, even hardened anti-Microsoft security pros were saying that Bill finally gets it, and that spam, viruses, trojans, and hacks were on their way out. Does Microsoft finally get it? Will Windows ever be secure? Or did the security pros just drink Bill’s kool-ade? Cast your vote here.

The edited audio archives are up for February 14 and 15. Sorry about the delay, there was a slight technical snafu. Last week’s will be posted early next week, as usual (KFI asks me to wait until at least a week and a day after a show airs to post it).

For those of you who are interested, these airchecks are recorded at the KFI studios using an automated computer logger in Real Audio format. KFI’s dynamite chief engineer, John Paoli, very graciously FTPs them to me each week, sending each hour of the show as a separate file. I convert the RAM files to WAV using Streambox Ripper for Windows, which does it almost as fast as it can write to the hard drive - 155x. I then use Adobe’s Audition for Windows - formerly Cool Edit Pro - to normalize the levels to 90% and snip out the news, traffic, and commercials. I’ve gotten pretty quick with the editing - it takes me about half an hour to do an entire show. I save the resulting file in MP3 Pro format, 32 kbps, 44.1 khz, mono and make them available once a week or so has passed.

Amy in Long Beach is creating CDs only she can read. I think she’s using XP’s built-in burning software. I would suggest trying a different CD recording program. My favorite: Nero - download a 30-day trial free and see if it can do the trick.

Valerie in Glendale is using Data Rescue to save her accidentally overwritten screenplay in Final Draft. All she sees is zeros.

No data restoration program can save a file once it has been overwritten. In this case, I gather that she saved a blank file on top of her original script. Valerie your best hope is to contact the folks who make Final Draft and see if they store backup or scratch files anywhere else on the drive. And don’t touch the drive until you’re certain there’s nothing more to recover - every change you make to your data runs the risk of erasing your original script.

Lois in Orange is a member of a Lois Club. She has all the Loises in her Outlook Contacts, each state’s Lois in a separate file. She wants to be able to organize them a little better. I suggest putting them back in a single file then using Outlook’s Category and Custom Views to arrange them as she likes. For example, assign a category to each Lois based on her state of residence. Then use the Views menu to create a custom view by Category and sorted by last name.

Dean in Westlake was looking for a Lojack type device for expensive measurement instruments. There are laptop lojack type devices, but they draw power from the laptop and use an Internet connection to phone home. Here are some possible solutions:* Whereify offers such devices for kids. It would work for anything as well.

• Lojack also offers a self-powered device (Lojack for Trailers) that’s designed for construction equipment. It might also work for your instruments.
• ZiLog’s Steve Pope showed us how to build a tiny self-powered GPS device for telescopes on The Screen Savers. He used a Trimble GPS chip in that.
• Finally, you might want to keep posted on Steve Wozniak’s new company, Wheels of Zeus. Rumor has it that’s exactly the kind of thing he’s designing.

Chris in Northridge is flying to London soon. He purchased a cigarette lighter charger for his notebook but it didn’t work too well in the car. He’s wondering if it will work on the plane. (American offers cigarette lighter charging in business and first class.) I don’t have any direct experience - I’m strictly a coach flyer. Anyone else know?

Tim in Los Angeles wants to copy DVDs on his Mac. I recommend the free DVDBackup for OS X. Kevin Rose has links to a number of programs that work on Windows on The Screen Savers web site.

Scott on the 210, has a mystery ad popping up when he boots. He’s running Windows 98 so he can use the Microsoft System Configuration Manager to turn the program off. Click Start, select Run… then type in “msconfig” and hit Enter. You can click the Startup tab and uncheck the appropriate entry. If it’s not obvious which one to try, use a little trial and error. You might also want to take a look at the freeware program Starter.

Charlie in Cypress was having problems with WinFax 10.2 and Windows XP. I’m not surprised. He’s using a four year old program that hasn’t been updated for XP. I recommend using an online fax service like EFax. It uses the Internet to send faxes and receives them in your email in-box. I find it much more convenient than paper faxes.

Windows XP also comes with its own fax program (which might explain why Symantec stopped updating Winfax). It’s not installed by default, though. To install it, open the Add/Remove Programs control panel, click the Add/Remove Windows Components button, then check the box marked Fax Services. You may need your original Windows XP install discs to complete the installation.

Bob in Thousand Oaks scans in documents to send to his friend but when he opens it the text is HUGE. That’s because he’s scanning at too high a resolution. Most printers want 300, 600, or even 1440 dots per inch. But a computer display is only 75–100 DPI. Make sure to scan your images at an appropriate DPI for the output device. If you want the size to be exactly the same as the original, scan it at the exact same DPI as the output device.

Larry in Los Angeles has a trojan horse and is trying to get rid of it. The problem is that it has infected a key system file, so no anti-virus can remove it. In this case you could try to “borrow” a clean copy of the file from another installation of Windows XP, or use the Windows XP installer’s Repair function to fix the problem. I haven’t had much success doing either, but it’s worth a try because the only other solution is a real pain: back up all your data then format the drive and re-install Windows. Make sure to fully erase the drive to eradicate all traces of the Trojan Horse - the Windows XP installer will do this for you.

To repeat my answer to Katie from last week, to safely reinstall Windows follow these steps:

• Install Windows XP
• Turn on the Windows firewall (Open Network Connections, right click your online connection, click Properties, click the Advanced Tab, then check the Internet Connection Firewall.)
• Get online and run Windows Update at windowsupdate.com, then install all Critical Updates. If you have to restart, re-run Windows Update until there are no more critical updates to install.
• Install an anti-virus and update it immediately.